Edenville Owls

“I know,” I said.

“And what has all that stuff got to do with Miss Delaney?” Joanie said.

“Maybe we’ll find out tonight,” I said.

The gray Ford Tudor came slowly down the street and pulled up in front of Miss Delaney’s house. The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach.

“Oh my God,” Joanie said.

Were we going to really have to do it?

Reverend Tupper got out of his car and looked casually up and down the street and walked toward Miss Delaney’s door. He rang the bell. The door opened and he went in. The door closed. I felt as if there were something stuck in my throat. I tried to say something, but made a hoarse noise. I cleared my throat.

“If we’re going to do it, we have to go now,” I said.

My voice was very scratchy.

“You scared?” Joanie said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Me too,” Joanie said.

“Can we do it?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll do it together.”

Staying in the shadows, we went along the hedge and around back to the tree beside the house. “You go first,” Joanie said.

I nodded. I was supposed to go first. I was the boy. I was having trouble breathing. I paused and took a big breath, then started up the tree. It had plenty of branches and was easy enough to climb, except that my arms and legs felt uncoordinated. I looked down. Joanie was right behind me. She was right. She could climb a tree as good as I could.

I got level with the roof of the porch, and held on to a branch above me while I stepped over onto the roof. I was wearing sneakers. So was Joanie, and dungarees. Joanie came right behind me, and the two of us crouched down by the attic window and listened. We heard nothing. Old Lady Coughlin’s dog didn’t bark.

The attic window was still open a crack, the way I’d left it, and I slipped my hands under and eased it up. It went easy enough. Then we waited again and listened. I could hear Joanie’s breathing next to me. I could hear my own too. But neither of us heard anything else.

I put my mouth next to Joanie’s ear.

“There’s boards on the floor,” I whispered. “To walk on. Be sure to stay on them.”

“Can we see in there?” Joanie whispered.

“There’s a window at the other end too,” I said. “Once we get in, we should stay still until our eyes adjust. Then I think we can see.”

“Okay.”

I still felt shaky inside. But there was something about being with Joanie that made me less scared. I wondered why. If we got caught, she couldn’t fight Reverend Weirdo any better than I could. But I realized suddenly that I couldn’t do this without her. Not with the reverend downstairs. I didn’t know why that was. And I couldn’t be thinking about that now.

I’ll figure it out later.

We stood quietly in the dark and waited until we could see. I was right. There was enough light coming in the front window from the streetlights, and enough light coming in the back window from the moon and stars and whatever, that we could see enough to move around.

I knew there were four rooms below us. Kitchen and dining room in the back. Bedroom and living room in the front. I pointed toward the right front corner of the attic and we went along the boards to the space above the living room like we were walking on a bomb. We stopped above the living room. We could hear people talking. Both of us lay down carefully. There was insulation between the rafters. As carefully as I could, I picked some up and moved it until the back of the ceiling showed. We barely breathed as we lay there... and we could hear.

“You have no right to keep a boy from his father,” Tupper said.

“And you have no right to take him from his mother,” Miss Delaney said.

“He belongs to me,” Tupper said. “He belongs moreover to the movement.”

“Which is why I won’t share him with you,” Miss Delaney said. “He belongs to no movement.”

“You will bring him up to be a whimpering one-world liberal fool,” Tupper said.

“I will not permit him to be turned into one of those pathetic little Nazis in your youth group,” Miss Delaney said.

I could hear footsteps. It sounded like Tupper was pacing.

“I want my son,” Tupper said kind of thoughtfully.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Richard...” Miss Delaney said.

“Don’t call me Richard,” Tupper said.

“I don’t care if you call yourself Batman,” Miss Delaney said. “I married Richard Krauss. How did you turn into Oswald Tupper?”

“There was a war,” he said.

“There was,” Miss Delaney said. “But it didn’t turn everyone into... whatever you are.”

“There are ways to make you tell me,” Tupper said.

“And there are police to be called,” Miss Delaney said.

“And I tell them that you are a divorced woman with a child? How long do you keep your job when that gets out?”

“You won’t do that,” she said. “You’re too afraid.”

“What am I afraid of?” Tupper said.

“I don’t know. But you don’t want the police involved any more than I do.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. Then footsteps, and then it sounded like he slapped her.

“I will do what I must to keep you from the boy,” Miss Delaney said. “You bastard.”